18 June 2007
♥ let's talk about groceries.
I know it's no one's favorite subject, but frankly, I feel like we have a great deal to discuss, because apparently there is a huge percentage of the population that is unfamiliar with grocery etiquette.
- Nobody likes grocery shopping. I know. It sucks. But lucky for you, the consumer, the experience only lasts half an hour, maybe an hour at most. My King Soopers experience usually lasts about 6 to 8 hours. As unhappy as I'm sure you are to be there, comfort yourself with the fact that at least you're not bagging groceries for $6.91 an hour.
- Check your goddamn eggs. All the checkers are trained to ask customers "Did you check your eggs today?" as they come through the line. If you just go "Uh, yeah," and send them down the line, I'm going to bag them up and put them in your little buggy and send you on your way and the broken eggs are so your problem. I'm sick of people who don't check their eggs and make me run all the way to dairy (shut up, I know, it's only like 20 yards) to get you more stupid eggs.
- You know those signs that say "Please Return Carts Here"? Now, I know this may be a stretch for some of you, but those signs are actually conveniently placed over large metal racks capable of holding several carts at once! If your fat fucking ass is too lazy to walk your cart to one of those specially marked areas, which are placed in every aisle of the parking lot for your convenience, you probably don't need to be grocery shopping anyway. Go home. I don't want to walk across the parking lot to get your stupid cart any more than you do.
- Please control your stupid ugly children. A rotten little boy threw a carton of blueberry yogurt at me the other day. Needless to say, it exploded on impact, leaving a sizeable (and somewhat offensive looking) yogurt stain on my pants, not to mention a rather unsightly welt the next morning. You'd be surprised at how hard this kid could throw a carton of yogurt. Anyway, his mother just looked at the checker, then at me, then back at the checker, and said, "Well, I guess we're going to need another blueberry..." So I was lucky enough to run back to dairy and get another one. Then I got to clean up the trail of blueberry yogurt I'd tracked from my checkstand to the freezer room.
- Mind your produce. If you absolutely insist on buying bizarre types of canteloupe and strange, unsightly species of peppers, at least know what they're called so I don't have to call Johnathan-from-produce, as cute as he is, over for the 239,587,293,847,392,874th time that day to identify it for you. Yesterday I asked a customer (in my cute little perky checker voice) "And what kind of, um... What is this?" Because it was seriously, like, a root. Like... I'm pretty sure he went into his garden, pulled up some weeds, brought them to the grocery store, and stuck them in a bag. And he goes "Um... vegetable root?" Thanks.
- Hygiene, please! Now, I'm not expecting everyone to wear their Sunday best to go grocery shopping, but please bathe at least once, maybe even twice a week if you insist on going into public. You smell bad and it's hard to concentrate on proper bagging, especially asking you if plastic is okay, when I'm trying to breathe through my mouth so I don't have to inhale your stench.
- Don't tell me how to bag groceries. "Now, I want you to bag like items together, you know, like a bunch of cheese, a bag for veggies, you know?" Wow, okay, I'm not a freaking rocket scientist, and I'm not planning on working here for the rest of my life or anything, but I know how to bag groceries, okay? I know what I'm doing when it comes to bagging your effing groceries, because I sat in front of the little screen telling me what to do for four hours, and I've bagged about a million orders of groceries by now. I definitely don't need your bagging expertise in my life. The only thing you really need to tell me about your bagging preferences is whether you want them in paper or plastic.
- You know what, no, we don't have McGooberbundlakdajflajflkasjf cheese here. We do, however, have this huge fridge full of cheese. See all the cheese here? If you can't find anything similar to the specific kind of cheese only produced when the moon is full after a summer rain on a Tuesday night in Malaysia when all the children are sleeping, you are probably too stupid to cook with it anyway.
6/18/2007
